The explosion of Twitter marks one of the biggest changes in the digital political landscape in the last few years — in 2008, Barack Obama had all of 100,000 followers by Election Day, a number that was well above 20 million on Election Day 2012. Though the Twitter and Faceook are often lumped together in the popular mind, Twitter isn’t quite a mass medium in the same way Facebook has become — it’s more of a channel to reach those“influentials” like bloggers, journalists and activists. Also different: you can pretty much post as often as you want on Twitter, while you’ll probably want to limit yourself on Facebook to keep from burning out your audience.

Functionally, Twitter is the very short equivalent of blogging, with a dash of social networking thrown in: individual Twitter messages (“tweets”) are limited to 140 characters in length, and people generally have to choose to “follow” someone’s Twitter feed in order to see their updates. As with Facebook, essentially anyone or any organization can create a Twitter feed, but in some sense Twitter lacks the reciprocal nature of a true social network — plenty of feeds have thousands of followers but follow far fewer people in return themselves (do you think that Lady Gaga really pays attention to what you say?).

One important consideration — Twitter’s a useful tool for campaigns, but its real political power may lie in what campaigns CAN’T do on it, which is to dominate the conversation. Twitter is truly a democratic medium (with a small “d”), and content and opinions spread on Twitter often find their way onto blogs and cable news and into newspapers. Twitter helps create the sea of information in which modern campaigns swim, and whether or not they’re active on Twitter themselves, it’s likely to shape the political communications environment in which they operate.

What to Tweet?

A common perception of Twitter is that it’s an inherently trivial medium — it’s often spoken of as a way to tell the world what you had for breakfast. But in practice, normal people who fill Twitter’s “airwaves” with self-indulgent drivel generally don’t pick up much of a following (for celebrities, that’s unfortunately NOT so true). In fact, perhaps the most common single use of Twitter is to spread links to blog posts, videos, news articles and other pieces of in-depth content, making the 140-character limit less of an issue.

In general, as in so many other parts of the online advocacy space, readers aren’t likely to pay much attention to you unless you have something of value to offer them. People who tweet too much trivia too often can find their followers dropping off in droves, so be sure to pay attention to the KIND of information you distribute. Not every tweet needs to be a haiku-like gem of wisdom, but it rarely hurts to think for at least a minute or two about your ultimate communications goals before messaging the world. How often people Tweet varies immensely — I have friends who’ve sent out 10 or 20 times more messages over time than I have, for instance. It really depends on what you have to say.

Building a Following

Once you’ve established an initial base of content on Twitter, next start building your following. Unfortunately, short of being mentioned in the Twitter feed of someone famous, finding an audience typically takes time. Start by following the people you want to follow you — your staff, political activists in your state, district or area, local bloggers, journalists, etc., since at least some of them will follow you back right away. Once they do so, you have the opportunity to reach them — and potentially, their own audiences through them.

Supporters = Amabassadors

Of course, you’ll want as many of your supporters to follow you as well, particularly if their own following is large and/or active. So ask them! A “follow us on social media” email is a nice break from a string of fundraising asks, and your supporters may appreciate a chance to help the campaign without having to open their wallets.

@Replies and Hashtages: Engaging the Community and Connecting with Prominent Voices

The most effective way to build your following over time is to actively engage the Twitter community, a process that can take several forms. The most straightforward is to use an “@reply,” in which you reference another Twitterer in your own post (i.e., “@epolitics why don’t you just shut up about this crap”). You can use @replies to hold a back-and-forth conversation with someone, plus they’re a good way to get the attention of someone with whom you’d like to connect (Twitter.com and other Twitter-management tools — like Hootsuite — typically make it very easy to see who’s @replied you).

@replies also play a role in “retweeting,” which is the forwarding of someone else’s posts to your own followers. Retweets are one of the signature characteristics of the ongoing Twitter conversation, since they let people provide value to their readers without having to write new content themselves. Plus, retweeting someone more prominent than you can be a good way to come to his or her attention, particularly if you use the old-school “RT @reply” method rather than Twitter’s newer built-in retweet function (RT’ing a tweet as an @reply also lets you add a comment, another valuable feature).

Besides RT’s, the other common bit of Twitter shorthand you’ll commonly encounter is a “hashtag,” a word or abbreviation preceded by the “#” sign. Twitterers use hashtags to refer to a topic that’s being discussed by several people at once, for instance an issue, event or public figure, and people often use Twitter’s search function to follow the extended discussion around a particular tag. This tendency makes hashtags a valuable way to gain exposure to new followers and to find yourself retweeted, assuming of course that you have something interesting to say. Some websites attempt to keep track of common hashtags, but the easiest way to find the hashtags in general use is to use a Twitter search around a topic and look for the tags terms people are using when they talk about it.

Engaging the Twitter community is obviously time-consuming, since you have to pay attention to what many different people are saying — you can’t participate in the conversation unless you’re actually listening. Besides hashtags, dedicated Twitter-management tools like Hootsuite and TweetDeck let you break the feeds you’re following down into various groups, for instance based on topics they cover or the kind of author they are (hint: track relevant journalists), and they also tend to speed up the process of posting content vs. going through Twitter.com itself. A good tool will typically allow you to pre-schedule Tweets for publishing, something that’s particularly handy if you have content that needs to go out over the weekend or while you’re traveling.

Besides public conversations, you can also “Direct Message” someone behind the scenes if you are following each other reciprocally, and I’ve known people who’ve been able to connect with a blogger or reporter via DM whom they’d never been able to reach via email.

Advanced Tactics

Twitter has given rise to an impressive array of different tactics and practices in its short time on Earth. “Live-Tweeting” an event involves covering it comprehensively as it happens, and social media-friendly conferences and seminars typically promote the use of certain hashtags to facilitate the process. Activists or groups can also pre-arrange TweetChats, which are public discussions at a particular time and around a particular hashtag. Many people pay attention to the hashtags that are “trending” on Twitter, i.e., becoming widely discussed, and the goal of a TweetChat or live-tweeting is often to either encourage a topic to trend or to ride the wave of a subject that’s moving up the popularity ladder. Finally, a Twitter interview can be an interesting way to run a one-on-one public conversation, though it practice it can feel like competitive poetry or a freestyle rap showdown — i.e., a public balancing act on a very narrow wire.

Twitter and Cell Phones

A common question about Twitter: why the 140-character limit? The answer is cell phones — Twitter is designed to be used like SMS text messages, making it one of the few online tools commonly and easily works on handheld devices. Some organizers have taken advantage of this fact to use Twitter to help rally communities in which cell phones are more common than access to the traditional internet. Others have used the Twitter/phone connection for on-the-spot coverage of rallies and other events, particularly as a means to distribute photos and videos shot with their phones. Finally, some campaigns in 2012 employed “protected” Twitter feeds — ones that can only be followed by people “approved” by the feed owner — to organize field staff and volunteers on the fly.

Advertising on Twitter

Warning: Ways to Stumble

The most important Twitter rule to remember? Don’t be an idiot, since something you post on Twitter will live forever, even if you try to delete it (just ask Anthony Weiner). Even if you’re smart enough not to send topless photos over the internet, a big mouth can still get you into trouble. As a friend of mine once said of a Democrat challenging Sen. Chuck Grassley, “as long as he has a Twitter feed, she has a chance.”

Another note of caution: electoral campaigns in particular need to be careful to distinguish between a candidate or officeholder’s Twitter feed and one updated by staff, since Twitter as a community tends to value authenticity. If Twitterers find out that a “candidate’s voice” is not actually his own, the campaign’s credibility can take a hit. Campaigns can use both approaches in a single feed if it’s clear whose voice is speaking at any given time, and can even turn a relatively rare candidate appearance on his or her own feed into an event to promote. Finally, don’t forget that once a campaign has a Twitter feed, people will expect to be able to follow it and interact with the author(s). Don’t start a feed and let it die of neglect.

Starting out, knowing the ins and outs of online networking can be a bit daunting for candidates. Here are a few tips for political campaigns are unfamiliar or starting out with the whole social media thing.

First a note to the candidates:

Much of how campaigns have been using social media amounts, at best, to a waste of people’s time and attention, and, at worst, to relentlessly spamming your friends. Not only is this ineffective, you’ll likely be irritating some of your friends and supporters – and I know you don’t want to do that.

For the candidates (and those who love them), I offer a few tips for using social media to get you started:

Define your objectives: It’s amazing how often this step is bypassed. Do you want to use social media to communicate with your existing supporter base or grow your base? Do you want to raise funds, awareness or both? Knowing the answer to these question will have a lot to do with your strategy. I’ve seen campaigns hoping to grow (don’t they all?), but using the tools as if they only wanted to be in touch with an existing audience. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the online community didn’t grown much.

Engage (a.k.a. It’s not all about you): Don’t just publish. If you primarily use these new channels to push out your “Come learn about me” events and links to your “Donate here” page, people will tune out pretty quickly. Don’t miss the important opportunities to talk with, not at, your audience. Doing this well will build your reputation and visibility.

Public vs. Private: Know what content (information, photos, etc.) about you can be seen online by the many (everyone) or by the few (close friends and family). Then, assume that it all can be seen by the many and plan with that in mind.

Connect the online and offline worlds: Most of your activities and content should have both online and offline components woven seamlessly together. This can range from posting photos on Facebook from an offline event to holding live events online allowing a large group the opportunity to interact in real-time, and everything in between.

Fish where the fish are: People want to hear from you where they hang out, not where you want them to be found. The fish are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube; not on your website. If you wait for the fish to come to you, you may be sitting alone with your pole in the water for a very long time.

Get a running start: It takes time to build real momentum, so start early. Sure, you can easily get a certain number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers in a short period of time, but will they be the right ones? Would you prefer to be connected to more people who don’t care about you or your message or fewer who are engaged and interested?

Damage control: Most people aren’t thinking about this as a top priority when they begin engaging through social media. We don’t really expect damage, so why would we be thinking about damage control? The fact is that, should something go awry or someone have something negative to say, it’ll be online in a heartbeat. If you’ve done a good job establishing your community online and have shown yourself to be authentic and responsive, you’re in a much stronger position to be able to respond to the situation in a faster and more credible way than had you not built your online presence so thoughtfully.

It takes work: Social media is not a set-it-and-forget-it proposition. For some reason, many have the misconception that all that is required is the up-front work to set up a “presence.” In order for your online presence to work for you, it takes work – attentive, responsive, ongoing work. I’ve seen many people set up Facebook pages, encourage people to join and then allow it to go dormant, even when community members post messages or questions. This is akin to publishing your phone number, yet not answering when someone calls.

On a list of 8 tips, this important one comes at no extra charge: This may not be the best job for the intern or your neighbor’s son: I’m sure the intern and the neighbor’s son are delightful people. They might even be heavy Facebook users. Just because someone does something often doesn’t mean they do it well. At speaking engagements, I often use driving as an example. I know people who have been driving for years, but when I’m in the car with them, my foot instinctively searches for the brake pedal on the passenger side. They drive a lot; they don’t drive well. Understanding best practices, the nuances of various tools, social media analytics and the pace and etiquette of the different social platforms are not simple tasks. There is too much at stake. Find (or hire) the right person to help you leverage the potential of social media and taking your campaign online – where the fish are.

Running a campaign isn’t easy. It takes a dedicated team to develop and execute the campaign’s strategy. You don’t need a separate social media strategy. What you need is a good understanding of how to use social channels in a way which supports your campaign strategy. Understanding why this is important and how to execute this will go a long way toward having the candidate be every bit as compelling online as they are in person.

The story of the “great” blogger with “great” content but no traffic is a common one. Your excuse may be that you’re blogging as a hobby, maintaining an online journal just for fun, or not in it for the money.

But who are you kidding? Be honest with yourself—if you wanted to journal and didn’t care about having an audience, it would have been easier to write in a diary or Word doc.

So, you want traffic, right? Even if you aren’t blogging with the intention of building a million-dollar blog, it’s nice to have your ideas, words, and hard work appreciated.

The unfortunate thing is that this idea of “content is king” has got you believing that, if you writeamazing content, the traffic will somehow find you and because of this, you’ve been producing a post or two a day for the last 6 to 12 months. While you haven’t wasted your time, this strategy is incomplete.

Whether or not you run your blog like a business, you need to strategize like a business. Focusing on your “product” with no investment in marketing is like a business sourcing materials, manufacturing 100,000 widgets, storing the inventory in a warehouse, and then wondering why the customers haven’t been buying the product.

Not all is lost, however. You have tons of great blog posts already published and now you need to find the right bloggers or audience to share it with.

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Link Building Strategies: Guest Blogging And Outreach Marketing

Unless you’re already recognized as an authority or have thousands of readers a day, a passive form of content marketing isn’t going to work. Instead, your link building campaign must take two forms—guest blogging and outreach marketing.

For purposes of link building in this article, let me define guest blogging and outreach marketing:

Guest blogging is contributing a blog post to a publication.

Outreach marketing is requesting that a blogger link to your content from an existing or upcoming post.

Any effective link building campaign should, at the minimum, incorporate a combination of these two tactics.

But how do you decide where to leverage each one?

Guest blogging

Guest blogging should be reserved for highly-relevant, powerful authority sites. This is because, as an individual blogger or one part of a small team, you don’t have the resources (time, energy, money, opportunity cost, etc.) to contribute to every single guest posting opportunity. You have to pick and choose where your resources will yield the greatest results.

The obvious example is that you would make a concerted effort to contribute to the CoSchedule Blog, whereas a smaller, lesser-known blog might get a pitch to be included in next month’s roundup.

Finding guest blogging opportunities.

To evaluate a blog, you must find relevant ones. This is really the easiest task of all because whose job is it to return relevant blogs? Google’s!

However, you need to be specific. If your blog is about “personal finance”, you wouldn’t try to reach out to CNN, Yahoo Finance, Wall Street Journal, or Bloomberg, which happen to be some of the top results for that keyword search.

Instead, pick a related, niche topic such as “how to become financially independent” and open up every website in the first 300 results (maybe not all at once).

Just remember that, as you work through this guide, it will benefit you to repeat the following process multiple times with different keywords to find the greatest number of bloggers to contact.

Evaluating blogs.

To determine if a website is worth guest blogging, don’t bother with the standard PageRank and domain authority (DA) metrics. PageRank hasn’t been updated since December 2013 and doesn’t seem to have the weight it once did in Google’s algorithm. Furthermore, as a third-party metric developed by Moz, DA is easily manipulated.

For example, I’ve come across dozens of penalized sites with high domain authority, and I view penalized sites as essentially useless for SEO purposes. If Google penalizes a site and takes away its traffic, it is effectively stripping the strength of that domain, so why get a link from one? Beware of link sellers and SEO’s selling links on crappy high DA sites.

Ultimately, the best indication of a blog’s strength is the amount of traffic Google sends to it via organic rankings, making SEMrush my favorite SEO tool. Just enter the blog you are interested in contributing to, choose “Positions” under the “Organic Research” tab on the left, and click on “All time” in the “Organic keywords” section.

If you find a level or upward trend, the blog is trusted by Google. Here’s a blog that ranks for nearly 10,000 keywords and is one you would likely be interested in earning a link from:

Note that this blog has been around for at least 4 years and enjoyed gradual growth until recently exploding with traffic. That’s the kind of blog you should want to be featured on.

However, if this blog only had a 6-month history, now that might be a red flag indicating black hat SEO. And while you may get a temporary boost in rankings by guest posting on a site like that, it might be short-lived and thus a waste of your time because the goal is to build a strong, sustainable, long-term business model even if it takes more time and energy.

An example of a blog to avoid may have a chart like this:

As you can see, this blog was hit by a penalty in late 2011 and has slowly been losing its keyword rankings.

Not all penalized domains will demonstrate an obvious trend like this one, but anytime you see a huge drop in traffic and no recovery, the blog is in decline. This doesn’t necessarily make it unworthy of contributing to, assuming the traffic hasn’t finally reached 0; it just means it isn’t a priority right now. Save it for a lull period when you want to tie up loose ends.

Guest blog vs. outreach: How to decide?

Once you’ve decided a blog is worth reaching out to, you must determine your approach. There aren’t strict rules for pitching a specific blog; it really depends on a number of factors, such as:

How many keywords is the domain ranking for?

How relevant is the blog to my target audience?

Is there a “Guest Post”, “Contributor Guidelines”, or “Write For Us” page? If so, how demanding are the guidelines?

Does the author link out often? If so, are the links dofollow?

How commercial does the site look?

For me, a domain needs to rank for at least 300 keywords or have a large, loyal following (subscribers or social media) to be worth investing hours writing content. The bigger the blog, the more time you should invest in making your contribution absolutely memorable because eventually, your portfolio of work will be your future credentials in email pitches.

The page must offer exceptional value to the blogger’s readers to convince him/her to share your resource; otherwise, you are wasting your time.

Choosing the right content to promote.

I’ve never been a prolific blogger. In fact, I probably don’t build “blogs” the way traditional bloggers do because I don’t develop content on a daily or even weekly basis.

Since I create and grow so many websites, I focus on writing content where it makes strategic sense. There isn’t an exact formula for that, but I’ll use my latest project as an example.

After 5 years of being a full-time Internet marketer and SEO expert, I finally thought it was time for me to start sharing my Internet marketing and SEO knowledge. I created StartABlog123.com to teach beginners how to start a blog.

Given that the competition in the all-encompassing “blogging” niche is intense, it was important that I make my content stand out. This meant comprehensive non-commercial content, useful guides and resources, custom images, infographics, etc.

For instance, I noticed a lot of solo bloggers discussing burn out, not knowing what to write about anymore, and linking to other resources that helped blog owners come up with new ideas. Knowing there was a “market” for this type of content, so I created the “Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas”.

Now lists of blog post ideas already exist, but none of them break them up into the types of content (how-tos, checklists, top 10 lists, interviews, podcasts, etc.) and then provide 5 examples of actual ideas for each. The post ended up being nearly 3,000 words.

Fortunately, after all that work, it was a hit. I even got a Tweet from Ann Smarty:

Knowing I had created something bloggers might consider special, I searched for “blog post ideas” in Google, skipped the first 30 results, and started approaching bloggers with the email pitch above. Since then, my traffic has nearly doubled!

Market Your Content

There are many bloggers who pour their heart and soul into their writing and have absolutely amazing ideas, analyses, and content. You may be one of them. Sadly, your work may not be getting the appreciation it deserves, and that’s because you haven’t spent the time to let readers know you exist.

That can all change with an effective marketing strategy.

You can get to 100,000 visits a month with 100 posts or 10,000 posts. Frankly, I prefer the former. The only difference is how much time you invest in marketing your content.

I’ve been keeping an eye on my news feed (as you’ll recall, I’ve liked over 4000 pages & counting) in hopes of finding lots of good & bad examples of contests being run since the rule change.

Honestly speaking, I’m not seeing as many contests as I’d expected.

This is probably because most of the pages I’ve Liked are larger company pages — and not small local pages.

In my opinion, contests on Facebook tend to work best with smaller, local pages — and maybe also with personality type pages, like music bands.

In any case, here are 3 examples of Timeline contests that violate the new Facebook Promotion Guidelines.

1. Tag To Win

According to Facebook’s Promotion guidelines :

In order to maintain the accuracy of Page content, our Pages Terms now prohibit Pages from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. So, for instance:

It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize

It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize

But time & time again I see pages (even after Facebook made the new guidelines) clearly instructing their fans to tag themselves in a photo to enter a contest.

An example of this is on the Nature’s Bakery page:

This is a clear violation of the Facebook Page Guidelines — but as you can see, 108 people Liked the post & there are 126 comments.

So you can see why doing this kind of contest is tempting.

2. Share To Win

I see this one much more often than the “Tag to Win” contest.

Our friends at Nature’s Bakery appear to be offenders on this type of contest as well:

What do the Facebook Guidelines say?

Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries” is not permitted).

Translation: Page owners can encourage users to share the contest & come vote — by Liking their comment on a contest — but sharing cannot be a form of entering the contest.

Looks like 144 people helped Nature’s Bakery violate the rules!

Just so you don’t think I’m picking on Nature’s Bakery, here’s another offender (Lake Tahoe North) that collected 176 shares:

3. Upload Cover Photo to Win

This is an old trick I’ve seen many page owners use over the years:

Load a great cover photo promoting your product or event

Encourage fans to upload it as their cover photo for a chance to win something

Is this against the Facebook Guidelines?

Let’s see:

All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines.

Yep, seems like it’s against the guidelines to me!

Even if you aren’t doing it as a contest, encouraging fans to load your cover as theirs for exposure is a no-no.

Here’s an example from a band, Fresh Bakin, who recently asked fans to load their cover photo to win tickets:

There is no way of knowing how many fans actually uploaded the cover — but it does appear 91 people Liked the image, which was part of the “rules” for their contest.

Legit Facebook Timeline Contests

Don’t get me wrong here — if you want to run a contest on your timeline, then go for it!

b. Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

3. Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries” is not permitted).

4. We will not assist you in the administration of your promotion, and you agree that if you use our service to administer your promotion, you do so at your own risk.

In other words, you can require fans to enter your Timeline contest by:

Liking a post

Commenting on a post

Liking & Commenting a post

Posting on the Page’s timeline

Sending a Message

Having the comment with the most Likes

It’s very tempting to run contests that involve sharing, tagging & uploading your cover photo — but don’t do it.

You’ve heard of social media calendars before, but do you know what they are and how to use one?

Chances are you don’t. And that’s okay… I didn’t either when I entered the realm of social media marketing. But once I learned about it and how to use it, it change how I marketed my businesses on the social web.

Here’s why you need a social media calendar and how you can create one:

You know how to set up a Facebook account, you have even boosted posts so really how hard is Facebook marketing?

What sets a true social media marketer apart on Facebook? Quite a few things actually, but mostly it’s their holistic vision and appetite for information. Here are a couple of examples of things pro marketers do on Facebook that other page admins most likely don’t.

Natively Uploaded Videos

When you see a natively uploaded video from a brand page on Facebook, it’s a sign that the marketer who shared the video is a pro. Why? Pro Facebook marketers know that natively uploaded videos get more views than links to YouTube videos on Facebook — like 52 times more(!) according to a blog post from GetResponse.

To upload and share a video natively to Facebook, you will need your video’s raw file. Facebook accepts many different video file types (you can check out their list here), but .mov and .mp4 are the most commonly used. Once you have your video’s raw file, you can drag and drop it into your page’s status update box or upload it as you would a regular photo/video.

What a natively uploaded video looks like:

What a YouTube video looks like:

Videos with clear calls to actions often yield better results. So to take your natively uploaded video up a notch, add a call to action button and fill out the optional video description fields.

Staying on top of industry news — like knowing that natively uploaded content performs better on Facebook — allows pro Facebook marketers to be agile. They can quickly assess (often before the news has become widespread) whether or not they should research, test, prepare for, implement or disregard an update.

Using Graph Search to Learn More About Their Audience

When Facebook rolled out Graph Search in late September 2013, pro Facebook marketers immediately started investigating uses for the new tool. What pro marketers found was that they could use Graph Search in a lot of savvy ways to learn more about their Facebook fans and the types of people they wanted to target.

Since its release, Graph Search has been refined and updated to function as a semantic search engine, making it an even morevaluable tool for Facebook marketers. Now search results are indexed by Facebook (rather than Bing) and include people (both friends and people in a person’s extended network, i.e., friends of friends, people with similar interests and people nearby), posts, hashtags and locations, according to a post by Lior Degani on Social Media Examiner.

Pro Facebook marketers use Graph Search to research their audience, then use the insights they discover to more narrowly (and presumably more effectively) target their users via Facebook posts and/or ads. Here are a few phrases you can enter into Graph Search to start quickly learning more about your audience:

Here are a few phrases you can enter into Graph Search to start quickly learning more about your audience:

Pages liked by people who like [insert the name of your page]

Pages liked by people who like [insert the name of one of your biggest competitors]

Groups joined by people who like [insert the name of your page]

Pages liked by people who are older than [insert age] and like [insert the name of your page]

Are Aware Of But Don’t Chase the Algorithm

Historically, when news breaks that a specific practice is working well on Facebook, you’ll immediately notice a trend of everyone doing the same thing — it’s usually a trick that claims to help you boost your posts’ reach and/or increase engagement. But while everyone is busy changing their posting strategies to start doing “what’s working right now,” pro Facebook marketers are letting the bandwagon go on its merry way.

What’s most important to pro Facebook marketers is consistency regarding the tone, brand image, and the type of content they share on their page. If memes are the new “it” thing to post on Facebook to drive likes, you’re definitely not going to see a company like GoPro start posting lots of memes on their page. Why? Because they’re pros and are going to stick to sharing the content that represents their brand best.

This doesn’t mean that Facebook marketing pros are against testing. Testing is always smart, as long as it doesn’t compromise or confuse your brand’s current strategy.

#4 Pros Admins Think Mobile First

The number of people logging onto Facebook via their mobile devices continues to rise. In fact, of Facebook’s 1.32 billion users, a whopping 30 percent of them use the social network only on their phone, according to The Verge.

As social mobile usage increases, so does the number of pro Facebook marketers who are implementing and testing mobile strategies. These marketers have mobile on the brain! Before they share content, they consider the experience of the users who will consume their content on a mobile device. When they invest in Facebook ads, they invest a portion of their budget into mobile ad buys and tools like ShortStack that allow them to create mobile-optimized landing pages.

Mass mobile consumption is the future, and pro-level Facebook marketers are the folks who know this best.

Facebook Is Not The Only Way They Promote Business

This is perhaps the most important point of all. Pro Facebook marketers, who are also likely pro Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, email, etc. marketers, know they can’t rely solely on Facebook to promote their business. So when Facebook decides to change their algorithm in a way that does not favor content from brands, pro Facebook marketers don’t panic. Why? Because they don’t have all their eggs in one basket, and they know that they can lean on the other social platforms and marketing channels they’ve developed.

Readers, what else do you think sets pro Facebook marketers apart from the rest? Let me know in the comment sections below.

Social media platforms allow different facets of your audience’s personality to shine through. These traits are useful to incorporate into your marketing personas to better understand and develop targeted communications and content. These characteristics form a social media persona.

Here are three attributes that influence social media persona development.

Motivation for social media participation. One way to assess your social media audience is to understand what drives them to engage with your company on these platforms. By doing so, you can more effectively fulfill their objectives. Here are five of the major categories of participants who interact with firms on social media.

Fans. These participants like your product or firm. They’re willing to show their association with your organization. But don’t assume that their willingness to raise their hand translates to purchase.

Information seekers. These social media participants are focused on finding out more about your products and organization. They actively look for additional information to make the optimal purchase decision and to maximize product usage.

Discount hunters.These are the price savvy shoppers. They associate with you on social media only to get access to discounts and promotions. They’re only loyal so long as you’re giving them the best offer.

Thought leaders. When these social media participants communicate, others listen. They tend to have influential blogs and large numbers of followers. They’re popularity can be social media based or from real life. They’re in-the-know trendsetters. They can move the social activity needle when they endorse your product or blog. Their comments and shares drive traffic.

Detractors. These people have issues with your firm and want others to know it. Often they’ve tried other routes to get their grievances addressed.

Function in the purchase process. It’s useful to know if the people who engage with you on social media platforms are in the market to buy from your organization. If so, how does this influence what they seek on social media platforms?

Prospects. These are potential customers checking out your firm. They may have heard about your company from friends and colleagues.

Customers. These people have bought from your firm recently or in the past. They may be looking to see your current offering, to get more information regarding product usage, or just want to associate with your firm.

Influencers. These people help make the purchase decision. They may do the research or just give their input. In large organizations, especially B2B and not-for-profit, their opinion can sway purchase decisions.

Decision makers. These are the people who ultimately make the purchase choice. Within a company, they have a lot of authority.

Fans. These are past purchasers who like your company and/or products. They’re worth their weight in gold because they tell others to buy from you. They want to engage with your company on social media.

Employees. The people who work for your firm. Train them to represent your company, particularly your social media team and customer service reps, to participate in a way that’s consistent with your organization. Have a set of social media guidelines so employees know how to identify themselves on social media platforms when they represent you and when they’re engaged in their private lives.

Competitors. These participants work for your competitors. Unless your competitors have high visibility thought leaders, you may not be able to distinguish them since they’ll engage through personal social media accounts. Assume your competitors know what you’re doing on social media.

Type of social media interaction. On social media platforms, participants act in one of three major ways.

Lurkers. Comprising roughly 90% of your total visitors, this is the great silent majority. While many marketers and bloggers are disappointed that these people don’t “do anything,” in reality, these lurkers can be your loyal readers or visitors. They just don’t do anything public on your social media platform. Notice, I didn’t say trackable. They are the bulk of your visitors generating the bulk of your pageviews.

Commenters. Accounting for about 9% of your visitors, these people take a small action. It can be a social share, voting or short comments. The easier you make it for them to do something, the more likely they are to act. These participants may exercise their creativity in terms of curating other people’s content since this is a low involvement way of distributing content.

Creators. Comprising a mere 1% of your base, these people actively engage. They leave comments, review your products or write guest posts. For most marketers, these participants are nirvana. Of course, you have no control over whether what they say is positive or negative. This small percentage of active contributors is one reason that marketing plans based on user-generated content are challenged.

To more effectively engage with your firm’s prospects, customers and fans on social media, it’s useful to create a social media persona or to augment your marketing persona with this information. Specifically, consider what motivates them to engage with you on social media platforms, understand their function in the purchase process, and the way they interact on these platforms.

If you’re thinking of marketing tactics such as email and social media as two separate entities, you’re missing out on a lot of benefits.

In this article you’ll discover tips for using social media to improve your email marketing.

Discover how to improve your email marketing with social media.

What You Need to Get Started

There are two things you ideally need to make most of the tips in this article. In general, both will help you grow your email list.

A Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie you offer people in exchange for their email address. The freebie can be an ebook, whitepaper, report, access to a tool, template, video, presentation, course, etc. You can see a lead magnet in action on the homepage of Social Media Examiner.

Example of a lead magnet promotion at the top of Social Media Examiner.

You should create your lead magnet with your ideal email subscriber and customer in mind. For example, if you want CEOs interested in social media to subscribe to your email list, create lead magnets about social media geared towards CEOs instead of people who work for them.

If you decide to use more than one lead magnet, you may want to create a resources section, learning center or another similar area on your website to help people find all of your freebies.

Visual.ly, for example, offers several lead magnets in their content hub. When you download one of their lead magnets, you’re taken to a squeeze page—the next thing you need for your own email marketing.

A Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a landing page dedicated to converting visitors into email subscribers. Ideally, your squeeze page should include some information about your lead magnet and an opt-in form to capture your visitors’ information and email.

Example of a squeeze page for email subscriber opt-ins.

If you need to qualify leads for your products or services, you may want to include a couple of questions to find out who the subscriber is and what his or her needs are. But if your main goal is simply to grow your email list, fewer questions will lead to more subscribers.

Armed with the URL to your latest lead magnet squeeze page(s), here are some ways to use social media to grow your email list.

#1: Facebook Promotion Options

Facebook Page Short Description

You have the opportunity to share URLs in two places on your Facebook page. One of those is in the main website field for your page and the other is in your page’s short description. This is a great place to share the URL for your lead magnet.

The short description field is limited to 160 characters, so use them wisely to describe your business and get people to your lead magnet.

Find out if your email marketing software provides a Facebook app to create an opt-in form on a Facebook page custom tab or you can use an app like Woobox Static HTML to display an opt-in form on your own website.

Facebook Page Call-to-Action Button

The Facebook call-to-action button can also be used to direct people to your squeeze page. Simply use the Sign Up text option and link it to your squeeze page.

How to set up a call-to-action button on your Facebook page.

To encourage people to click on the call-to-action button, you can create a custom Facebook cover photo that promotes your lead magnet and points to the button.

Facebook Page Cover Photo

Speaking of the cover photo, you can also use the cover photo’s description to link to your squeeze page like Mari Smith does.

Example of a Facebook page cover photo promoting a lead magnet.

Even if you don’t use your cover photo to promote your lead magnet, you should at least update it to include a link to your website so people can click through to it.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook ads are a perfect way to promote your lead magnet and get your ideal subscribers signed up to your email list. Formstack‘s ad is a perfect example of promoting a free ebook, using a great image and a download button as the call to action.

Example of a Facebook ad promoting a lead magnet.

Be sure to use the interests and demographics targeting options to go beyond age and location targeting to qualify the leads who see the invitation to your email list. The more qualified your leads, the better your email marketing will perform.

How to use targeting options for a Facebook ad.

You can also upload your current email list as a custom audience and create a lookalike audience to target people similar to your current email subscribers.

How to create a lookalike audience from your email list.

Choose Lookalike Audience in your ad’s targeting options in the Custom Audiences field to promote your lead magnet to them.

Only use this option if you feel that your current email list is fully qualified for your business. Otherwise, you simply attract more unqualified email leads.

#2: Twitter Promotion Options

Twitter Bio

Similar to using the short description on your Facebook page, you can use your Twitter bio to promote your lead magnet and leave your website field for your main website URL.

Example of a link used in the Twitter bio.

Placing the URL of your squeeze page in your Twitter bio is particularly useful because only the link in your Twitter bio shows up in places like Twitter search results.

Example of how a link in a Twitter bio appears in Twitter search results.

For maximum effectiveness, avoid including hashtags and other Twitter profile @username handles. That makes certain there’s only one clickable item in your Twitter bio for people to act on.

Twitter Lead Generation Card

The Twitter lead generation card is a feature that lets you collect email addresses directly from within Twitter. You’ll find it in the Twitter ads section and the setup will look like this.

Otherwise, you download the list of email addresses from users who opt in from your card and upload it to your email marketing service. You can find your leads by going to your cards and clicking on the Download Leads icon (the one with the right arrow).

The location of your Twitter lead generation card submissions to export.

To get exposure for your Twitter lead generation card, simply tweet it to your audience or promote it using Twitter advertising.

Twitter Advertising

To promote your Twitter lead generation card or tweets with links to your latest lead magnets, you can use Twitter advertising. Just like Facebook ads, you can target qualified audiences. On Twitter, you do this with interests and followers of other Twitter accounts (like your competitors).

How to target specific audiences for a Twitter ad campaign.

As with Facebook, you can market to custom audiences on Twitter. Start by uploading your current email list to Twitter’s audience manager. Choose your email list as a tailored audience, and then check the box for targeting users similar to your tailored audience. Then select your email list as a tailored audience again to exclude these users from ad targeting (since you don’t need them to sign up again).

You can also create a tailored audience from your customer list to ensure qualified subscribers by targeting your ad to a similar audience.

#3: LinkedIn Promotion Options

LinkedIn Publications & Projects

On your personal LinkedIn profile, you can add a Publications section that allows you to link directly to your ebooks, whitepapers, etc. You can also use this to link directly to your lead magnet squeeze pages.

Example of the LinkedIn Publications section linking to a lead magnet.

If your lead magnet is a tool, like a free calculator, add a link to your tool in the Projects section of your profile.

Where you can find the Publications and Projects sections to add them to your profile.

For more visibility, add your best lead magnet to the website links in your Contact Info. This adds it to the top of your public profile so visitors who aren’t logged into LinkedIn can still see it.

LinkedIn Advertising

For businesses looking to target specific professionals as email subscribers,LinkedIn advertising offers the best professional ad audience targeting options to help you get the ideal email subscribers on your list.

How to target specific audiences with LinkedIn advertising.

Additional Opportunities on Social Media

Additional ways to promote your lead magnets and grow your email list with social media include the following.

Pin a great image of your lead magnet to your Pinterest profile and link that image to your lead magnet squeeze page.

Share a great image of your lead magnet to your Instagram profile andtell people to click the link in your bio. Temporarily (or permanently) change the link in your Instagram profile to point to your lead magnet squeeze page. Be sure that your squeeze page is responsive, since most people from Instagram will be viewing it on their mobile device.

Create videos on Vine and Snapchat telling your fans to download your latest lead magnet. Make sure your URL is short, easy to say, and easy to remember, like yourdomain.com/freereport.

#4: Make Sharing Easy

You don’t have to rely solely on your own promotion tactics to get more people to your squeeze pages. You can enlist the help of people who’ve already downloaded your free ebook or report.

Let’s say you offered a free ebook as a lead magnet. Simply create a landing page that thanks people for reading your latest ebook and add social sharing buttonsthat allow them to share the squeeze page for your lead magnet with their own audiences.

To get people to share on Twitter, pre-populate a Twitter Share button with custom text and the URL of your squeeze page. Make sure the URL being shared is the squeeze page of your lead magnet. Otherwise, you’ll end up with people sharing your thank-you page.

How to set up a Twitter Share button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

How to set up a Pinterest Pin It button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Put It All Together

Once you’ve begun collecting your high-quality leads, there are a number of ways you can use social media to impact your email marketing campaigns.

For example, you can use your Twitter audience to split test email subject lines. If you send your experimental tweets through Buffer, you’ll get the following analytics for each tweet.

Buffer analytics for a tweet.

The tweet with the most engagement can be considered the best headline, and the best headline should be used as the best email subject line.

Or you can get more traction for current email campaigns by targeting your email subscribers with social ads on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure the campaign and your social ads use the same images, call to action, etc., so your subscribers are presented with a similar message no matter where they see it.

What do you think? Have you learned a few ways social media can help grow your email list and reach your email subscribers? Do you have additional tips?Please share them in the comments!

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Why?

The methods used to construct language and motivate customers often stem back to basic psychology, which is something used to persuade, engage and influence buyers.

For example, using rhetorical questions at the start of Twitter ads or general “sales” tweets might work well for you. The tweets will engage users and make them consider how your product or service could benefit them.

Here’s how you can improve brand recognition, catch the attention of more users and increase the number of clicks, retweets and favorites that your tweets receive.

#1: Take Advantage of the Bandwagon Effect

Humans are innately social beings; we’re born with a powerful psychological need to belong. This dates back to our ancestors who lived at a time when it was best to live in groups to ensure a higher chance of survival. Although society is different now, identification with and a sense of belonging to a group or organization are paramount to our well-being.

Psychologists say that there are three primary groups that people aim to associate with: groups to which they’d like to belong (aspirational), groups that share the same ideas and values (associative) and groups to which they don’t want to belong (dissociative).

The language you use within your tweets can help users identify with one of the three primary groups. As a result, they’re more likely to respond.

York Hornets used an aspirational tweet to encourage followers to become part of their team.

The tweet below from the Huffington Post uses the values of association to engage users and encourage them to respond to an article. The tweet asks if followers agree with a strong statement. Users will reply, retweet and click through, as they try to decide which side they are on.

This controversial tweet uses the value of association to encourage followers to respond.

The language used within tweets can also help customers make a dissociative connection to a competitor, and as a result, a better association with your brand. Technology companies often compare their product to a competitor’s spec or an older product, and receive excellent engagement.

In an attempt to gain customers Samsung compared two products, showing its product as the better choice.

Anyone viewing the above image from Samsung would want to associate themselves with the newer camera and improved image, rather than the old one.

Key Takeaway: Use Twitter to link your products and services to the three primary groups that customers respond to: aspirational, associative and dissociative. This will promote higher engagement, as well as cultivate users who have an affinity for your brand.

#2: Use Image Psychology

Many marketing and advertising studies have been conducted to see what type of images have the highest conversion or click-through rates. In nearly all studies, an image of a person, particularly a close-up of his or her face, increased the success of the ad or the web page.

Apply this research to your Twitter strategy. Tweet images with faces. And be sure tohave a nice headshot on your Twitter profile.

37 Signals conducted a test that looked at different variations of the Highrise home page to see which one converted the most visitors to paying customers. They found that a page where they included an image of a person created a 102.5% increase in signups.

The landing page on the right, which used a person’s image in the design, increased signups by over 100%.

Jakob Nielsen, an expert in user interface design, explains that “a huge percentage of the human brain is dedicated to remembering and recognizing faces. For many, faces work better than names.”

To make your brand more recognizable to your Twitter audience, head up your profile image with the face of the company, such as the CEO or founder. This will make that person more recognizable to the audience, which is an especially important tactic for a new company.

Even for a SaaS company, where there is no obvious “person” to sell, it’s useful to include images of happy customers within individual tweets, particularly those linking to blog posts or case studies. The effectiveness doesn’t really come from who is in the image, it’s more about what the image conveys to the reader.

Founder, Maximize Your Social | Maximize Social Business | Social Media Center of Excellence | Social Media Tools Summit

One week ago I gave you advice on why you should use the LinkedIn publishing platform once you get access to it, and you will get access to it in the not so distant future if you don’t have access to it today. Whether you’re a content creator, a business, or a professional, the LinkedIn publishing platform provides a compelling way for you to get found in, engage with, and derive business value from LinkedIn. So, now that you’re ready to start blogging on LinkedIn, here’s my recommendation for writing posts that will get read in the news feeds of your followers. Note that this platform was only recently launched, so my advice might change in the future, but based on what I see and understand now, these are my recommendations:

1. Blog for the LinkedIn Demographic

I wrote about this in How to Use the New LinkedIn Publishing Platform, but this will be the most challenging concept for businesses to understand. I believe that your content should be unique to LinkedIn and geared towards the LinkedIn demographic. If you just want to copy and paste your blog post, I don’t think you’re going to be as effective on LinkedIn as you could be – and I think at some point you might get hurt by Google’s and/or LinkedIn’s algorithm(s). Companies that excel at social media marketing target their content and voice towards each unique community in social media. You should as well. Look at it another way: For most professionals who don’t have a personal website, LinkedIn IS their website and the new publishing platform WILL become their blog. You will have to compete with them for readership in the not-too-distant future.

2. Watch Your Frequency

Every social network plays around with their news feed or timeline and thus have an algorithm similar to Facebook Edgerank. LinkedIn is no different. LinkedIn has to decide what posts to display on who’s network updates, and I would tend to believe that if you publish too frequently, that might be hurting your chances for maximum impressions for each post. Just look at the LinkedIn Influencers: They’re not publishing on a daily basis, are they? With that in mind, I myself only plan to start publishing on a weekly basis, and I would recommend that you keep that to your approximate maximum as well. As I said

3. Don’t Underestimate the Power of the Visual

Visuals show up prominently in the LinkedIn newsfeed as they do everywhere else. Make sure that you use a visual at the top of your blog post that resonates with the professional demographic that make up LinkedIn.

4. Headlines are Critical

Time is short, and while your content might go out into the LinkedIn network updates, that’s only half off the battle: Your headline must be short, concise, and give professionals a reason to click through. A look at the most popular headlines of Influencer posts will give you and idea of some great headlines that you can try to emulate for success.

5. Keep Your Post Short

My posts are on the long side (this one is around 1,050 words), but your posts don’t need to be. My rule of thumb would be to make your post at least 300 words, but there is no reason why you have to blog longer than 1,000 words here on LinkedIn. Once again, I believe that for professionals where time is money, many simply don’t have the time to read through a longer post. Keep it short and simple when possible.

6. Link with Love

Just as you should update your LinkedIn profile with visual elements to showcase your work and content across the web, you should also do so here when you blog on LinkedIn. I wouldn’t overdo it, and I would definitely make it look natural and organic, but linking to provide a greater resource is an absolute best practice in blogging anywhere. “Link with Love” is also about recognizing other authors of content that you can link to if they influenced you, or marketing partners if you did something with them that is relevant to your post (see 9. below).

7. Share Your Post Inside AND Outside LinkedIn

If you want to get your content read on LinkedIn, don’t just share it on LinkedIn: Share it everywhere you can! Other social networking sites and your email newsletter are a great start. And, while I don’t recommend you creating a blog post and summarizing it on the LinkedIn publishing platform, I do recommend creating a LinkedIn publisher post and then summarizing it on your blog to a link back to LinkedIn!

8. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Needless to say, every post that you publish might lead people back to your profile. If you want to be considered an authority on the subject, you’d better have an optimized LinkedIn profile! Here are my most recent collection of LinkedIn profile tipsfor you to follow.

9. Embed

Right now LinkedIn only provides you the option of embedding YouTube videos and Slideshare presentations, but if you have one that is relevant to your post, that can only help in better engaging with your audience – and building greater loyalty for your future posts. While the below YouTube video is not just about the new LinkedIn publishing platform, I was on a Google Hangout with Eric Enge from the leading digital marketing agency today where I discussed the future of social media in 2014 and why the new LinkedIn Publishing platform changes everything.